Two Weeks That Changed the War

Wherein operations along the Potomac begin McClellan's downfall

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At the beginning of this week we looked at the first of two weeks that changed the American Civil War. The fall of Ft. Donelson on the Cumberland River to the obscure Brig. General Ulysses S. Grant had become a challenge to the general-in-chief of the Northern armies, Maj. General George B. McClellan. As Brig. General George Meade, commanding a brigade in McCall's Division (the Pennsylvania Reserves) put it on February 23 in a letter to his wife: "I fear the victories in the Southwest are going to be injurious to McClellan, by enabling his enemies to say, 'Why cannot you do in Virginia what has been done in Tennessee?'"

In the week that followed he had no choice but to begin an offensive motion with his Army of the Potomac, despite his long-laid plans to move it to the Rappahannock River and march on Richmond. The results of that decision changed the war.

February 24, Monday

Don Carlos Buell

The soldiers of Brig. General Don Carlos Buell reached the northern banks of the Cumberland River and looked across into an abandoned Nashville. McClellan's protege would occupy the city, despite the efforts of his (nominal) immediate superior Maj. General Henry Halleck to get Grant there first. Telegraphing his headquarters in St. Louis from Washington, McClellan told Halleck to "cooperate with [Buell] to the full extent of your power, to secure Nashville beyond a doubt." He said he would order Buell to next seize the nearby railroad junction and then "the next move should be either a direct march in force upon the rear of Memphis or else first upon the communications and rear of Columbus."

He may have gotten Columbia's name wrong, but McClellan's orders set in motion the movement of armies that led to Shiloh, what would be the bloodiest single day in American history until McClellan himself surpassed it at Antietam, and the bloodiest multi-day battle in American history until Gettysburg. The ferociousness of the battle would play a significant role in undermining McClellan's plans for what would become the Peninsula Campaign.

Two Weeks That Changed the War

Wherein the reverberations of the capture of Ft. Donelson spur action

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After months of low-level activity between the two Armies of the Potomac that had resided in the Washington area since summer 1861, the last two weeks of February saw the beginning of a flurry of activity. Rapid-fire decisions led logically to other rapid-fire decisions that set the course of the war for long after both armies left the theater. This is a day-by-day look at those two weeks of decisions made in the Washington area that led to the beginning of the Civil War as we know it.

February 17, Monday

On the day Joe Hooker sat frustrated, waiting for general-in-chief George McClellan to provide the transports needed to make an attack from Liverpool Point in Charles County, Maryland, across the Potomac River to Evansport [Quantico], Washington City was electrified by the details of the surrender of Fort Donelson, on the Cumberland River. The fort had fallen the day before when its Confederate commander (and former U.S. Secretary of War) John Floyd and his second-in-command, Gideon Pillow, had fled on February 16, leaving a disgusted Simon Bolivar Buckner to surrender it that evening to the unknown Brig. General Ulysses S. Grant.

Grant could not say he was unknown on February 17, and all of Washington was titillated to learn that when Buckner had sent asking for terms of surrender, Grant had written back "unconditional and immediate surrender." For those in Washington already angry at Buckner's good pre-war friend McClellan for moving slowly, the contrast couldn't be starker. Grant's control of the fort made Nashville indefensible, McClellan's inaction kept the Confederates in Centreville. Lincoln sent Grant's nomination to major general of volunteers to the Senate that night.

The Other Feud

Wherein we follow the little remembered Southern command crisis

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Joe Johnston wrote with a barely contained rage:

Sir: A colonel of a Mississippi regiment has just informed me that you had referred him to me for information in relation to the recent act of Congress granting bounties and furloughs to non-commissioned officers and privates of the Provisional Army. I have received no order from the War Department directly on this subject.

If the first winter of the war for the North was headlined by the struggle between McClellan and the Lincoln Administration, it was equally true that the winter for the South revolved around a similar power battle between Johnston and the Davis Administration. But the latter fight is remembered only as a side-note by even the more diligent historians while the former is the centerpiece of even the most casual histories of the war.

There are many reasons this may be. For one, Johnston was a far less colorful character, who bequeathed history no inflammatory personal letters. But the story also lacks a hero. Johnston was not a great general in his campaigning and won no great victories that he could claim sole credit for (forever having to share Manassas with Beauregard), while the gross mismanagement of the Davis Administration hardly provides a sympathetic character to the reader. And the later success of Lee commanding the same army helps write a simple narrative for the war: South is dominant up until Gettysburg, when either the little guy North wins through pluck and determination or the resource-rich North crushes the valiant South tragically, but inevitably (depending on your persuasion). Johnston, and his feud with Davis and his surrogates, sullies that narrative by forcing us to recognize two equally inept factions, struggling to create a physical embodiment of their ideological passions and impose it on the continent.

When General Joseph E. Johnston started writing Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin on January 18, the specific issue was bounties and furloughs, an ill advised solution to a manpower problem. In the early days of 1861, when it was still a secession crisis and not yet a war, the Provisional Confederate Congress had to solve the problem of how to protect their would-be nation from the U.S. Army. After all, it had been Maj. General Winfield Scott that had mobilized U.S. soldiers in South Carolina to help put an end to the Nullification Crisis a quarter of a century earlier, and it was Winfield Scott who was advising Lincoln on how to deal with the Secession Crisis in 1861.

Rec: I Expose My Neck. UGH!

My favorite things I read this week

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OLD SECESH. "While I cover my Neck, I expose my Feet, and if I cover my Feet, I expose my Neck. Ugh !"(Harper's Weekly)

Before proceeding to a heaping helping of recommendations, a report from a minor skirmish today in history:

Headquarters One hundred and fifth Pa. Vols.
Camp Jameson, Va
December 19, 1861

Sir: In obedience to your orders, I left this camp at 9 pm of the 18th instant with a force consisting of the regiment under my command, a squadron of the New Jersey Cavalry, under Captain Jones, and two sections of artillery, under Lieutenant Monroe, New Jersey Volunteers, and arrived at Potter's house within half a mile of the extreme outposts of our pickets on the right near 11:30 pm. I found that the pickets had been undisturbed, and immediately proceeded to distribute my force as would best support the pickets and preserve the force itself, should we be attacked. No demonstration was made by the enemy during the night. I left Potter's house for Pohick Church about three quarters of an hour after daybreak, having been detained that long in developing a movement to capture some of the enemy, but which proved abortive.

We arrived at Pohick about 9 am; was informed that the previous day the enemy had there a force of 200 cavalry and also a regiment of infantry concealed in the woods to the west of the village. Remained at Pohick about two hours; sent a party down the Telegraph road and discovered about a mile distant a rebel picket 6 or 8 strong; fired at them and they fled, but did not pursue as my instructions did not allow me to proceed beyond this point. Left Pohick Church between 11 and 12 am, and returned to camp at 3:30 pm. Came by the village of Accotink, and was there informed that no rebel forces had been in the village for over a month.

Respectfully submitted,
A.A. McKNIGHT,
Colonel, One hundred and fifth Regiment Pa. Vols.

Colonel Amos A. McKnight had led his small detachment out on a heavy patrol, because his division commander, Brig. Gen. Samuel P. Heintzelman, had suspected Confederate activity around the remains of Pohick Church (which his men had ransacked in November). McKnight had raised the men himself from around the Pittsburgh area in August, after completing his own service as Captain of Company I, 8th Pennsylvania, a 90-day unit that had not done much of anything under Robert Patterson while Joe Johnston sneaked off to help clobber McDowell at Bull Run.

McKnight would continue with the regiment into the spring, before being severely wounded and missing almost a year of fighting. He would return for two battles, before being killed at Chancellorsville.

***

Disunion managed two entire good articles this week. First, the most suspenseful read I've had in awhile, when an LSU professor recounts the story of two Tigers condemned to death. Then the story of "The Picket Guard", a forgotten poem whose popularity still influences us today, most famously through the English-language title of Erich Maria Remarque's famous war novel (oh, and also some blog out there).

Speaking of Ron, he covered one of those courts-martial that George Meade spent so much of November and December complaining about.

This week I featured some stories about the Confederate right, including the Aquia District, led by Theophilus Holmes. By coincidence, here's his resignation letter from the U.S. Army. People believe handwriting tells a lot about people. It's probably not true, but if it was, this would say all you need to know about ol' Theophilus.

The Atlantic had an interesting piece contrasting how the Civil War was remembered 50 years ago to today, called "Not Your Grandfather's Civil War Commemoration."


And introducing one of my new favorite blogs, which covered the Irish Brigade in Winter Quarters.

It was a good week for reading.

Ice on the Potomac

Wherein either Hooker exaggerates or global warming is real

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The cold weather of December had brought a warming, rather than a cooling of tensions on the Lower Potomac. From the headquarters of the Department of Northern Virginia in Centreville, General Joseph E. Johnston was preparing his Southern army for a battle that he expected, even this far into the winter. While winter campaigning was something that no army enjoyed, it certainly wasn't unusual. Writing to his subordinate commanders about the situation, Johnston would have been well aware that Union forces were on the offensive in the Western Virginia mountains and that Brig. Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson was playing a cat and mouse game with two Union forces in what is today the West Virginia panhandle.

On December 5, Johnston had written to Brig. Gen. William H.C. Whiting, commanding his right flank at Dumfries about the eventuality of an attack by the Union army and his plans for a Confederate response.

My Dear General... I want to know precisely what roads are open and which closed. Please inform me The enemy's movements might be such as to tempt me to go in your direction first. It is necessary to be prepared to do so at all events... Should we go against your enemy it ought to be in two columns on those two routes. 

And, referring to the way he had tricked Union Maj. Gen. Robert Patterson before Manassas into thinking his army was at Winchester when it was in fact on the way to turn the battle's tide, he added a line that would have brought a shout of triumph to Professor Thaddeus Lowe: "The infernal balloon may interfere with such success as we had with Patterson."

Meanwhile, Johnston was also in a letter battle with Richmond over orders issued by Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin that he immediately create two brigades of only Mississippi troops, which Johnston scornfully refused to do in several hundred words, especially because two of his Mississippi regiments were with Whiting.

The forces as now arranged are perfectly familiar with their respective positions, officers and men have become accustomed to each other, are acquainted with the nature of the ground they occupy, &c. The execution of Orders No 252 would work a complete revolution in the organization of the army, and necessitate a change of position of all the regiments from Leesburg to Dumfries, and from this position to Dumfries and Leesburg. Should the enemy attack us whilst these changes of station are in process, an event by no means improbable, it would be almost impossible to avert disaster to our arms.

Benjamin, naturally, wrote back expressing President Jefferson Davis' "desire" that Johnston should simply send the 13th, 17th, and 18th Mississippi regiments from Leesburg (where they had been crucial at Ball's Bluff) to Whiting as reinforcements, "to whose brigade they belong". Johnston could then move any other brigade to take their place at Leesburg, never mind that the last major troop movement at Leesburg had prompted a battle.

The New Confederate Battle Flag

Wherein the most famous (infamous?) non-official symbol in America gets its start

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Today's post actually started back in July. July 21, the date of the Battle of Manassas. Though it didn't really start then either, if we're being completely thorough.

But on July 21, in a commonly recited story, General (then Brig. General) G.T. Beauregard could not tell whether the Stars and Stripes of the United States or the Stars and Bars of the Confederate States fluttered from the flagstaff of the brigade marching from Manassas Junction towards Henry Hill, set to come up behind his barely holding line. Historian Douglas Southall Freeman describes the situation colorfully:

As Beauregard looked anxiously to the southwest he saw a marching column. At its head was its flag. Eagerly he turned his glass on the standard: Was it the flag of the Union or of the South? For all his effort he could not tell. Now a courier brought him a dispatch from the signal corps. A large force, approaching from the very quarter to which Beauregard was looking, was believed to be Patterson's Federals. Beauregard's heart sank. Once again he focused his glass on the approaching column. There was an anxious heart-thumping delay. Then a breeze swept across the hill and set the summer leaves to rustling. It struck the column, it stirred the bunting, it spread the colors--Confederate. The needed brigade had arrived to save the day! It was Early's.

Reinforcing the Lower Potomac

In which we swing by Budd's Ferry and Evansport

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Not a long post today, just a quick stop by the opposite sides of the batteries on the Lower Potomac that were impeding traffic to Washington City. In Maryland, at Budd's Ferry, was the headquarters of Joe Hooker, nominally in command, but having a tough day, apparently:

Headquarters Hooker's Division, Camp Baker, Lower Potomac, Maryland, November 22, 1861. Brig. Gen. S. Williams, Assistant Adjutant-General, Army of the Potomac: 

 General: An animated fire was kept up from the rebel batteries on two or three schooners descending the river this afternoon with no better success than heretofore. The rebels will certainly abandon their purpose of claiming the navigation of the Potomac by means of the batteries now in position ere long. They must see that it is labor in vain. Of late a large number of vessels have passed and repassed at night, and no effort has been made to check them. Thus far their labor has been equally fruitless during the day.

Professor Lowe has not returned from his mission to Washington. I see no effort making to inflate the balloon on shore, as was intended by him at the time of leaving.

The two companies of cavalry dispatched to the lower part of the Peninsula have not returned.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JOSEPH HOOKER, Brigadier-General, Commanding Division. 

Hooker had been having trouble with his second-in-command, Dan Sickles, who would give orders without notifying him--if he was even present in Maryland. Thaddeus Lowe and his balloons happened to be Sickles' find, so it's probably not surprising that he was off on his own agenda. Hooker's mood would brighten the next day when McClellan announced that he would be adding a third brigade to his division, one of all New Jersey regiments that called itself the Second New Jersey Brigade, under Colonel Samuel Starr.

Division Of This Army

Wherein Dumfries is of strategic importance

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With winter coming, General Joe Johnston, commanding the Department of Northern Virginia from his headquarters at Centreville, had two priorities: first, was to provide clothing, food, and dwellings for his men so they could survive the coming winter; second, was to make sure their defensive position was strong enough to defend against an attack by the Northern forces venturing further and further out from their defenses. Neither priority was close to being accomplished, but today we'll focus on defense.

By fiat from Richmond, Johnston's unified command had become three parts. His left-most flank was the Valley District, commanded by Maj. General Thomas Jackson, who people had taken to calling "Stonewall." Jackson, who Johnston had come to rely upon in their pre-Manassas days in the Shenandoah Valley and who he had high hopes for as a division commander, left the Army of the Potomac the first week of July to take over the rowdy militia of the Valley. Not surprisingly, a few days later his old brigade followed him, depriving Johnston of one of his best units. Richmond had also sent Jackson two brigades from across the Alleghenies along with their division commander William Loring, underscoring the importance of the Valley.

On his right-most flank was the second carve-out from Johnston's command, the Aquia District under Maj. General Theophilus Holmes. Stretching from Powell's Creek [Lake Montclair] to the Potomac to the Rappahannock, the district had resulted from the desire to keep Holmes in an important position. But it meant that Johnston's right-wing was effectively an independent force from his main body, the Army of the Potomac. Richmond intended that army to be the District of the Potomac, commanded by General G.T. Beauregard, but Johnston intended to command that army himself in battle, and had long-ago agreed to Beauregard's preference that he command the army's First Corps, with the Second led by Maj. General G.W. Smith.

All this mattered especially in the beginning of the third week of November because the Confederates had become well-aware that the Union Army of the Potomac had moved a division of soldiers opposite the Aquia District's batteries at Evansport [Quantico]. Though Holmes had known about the movement for several days already, it was a subordinate of G.W. Smith's who touched off the powder keg on November 16.

Gradually Carried Into Effect

Wherein we take stock of the belligerents at an early turning point

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November 1861 saw the realization of plans for change in both Northern and Southern armies that had been percolating since July, changes that when completed over the winter would shape the next two years of warfare. The most immediately obvious was the removal of Bvt. Lt. General Winfield Scott in favor of Maj. General George McClellan as general-in-chief of the U.S. Army and thus the Northern war effort, but changes in the South had equal impact.

McClellan had already put an indelible touch on the North's Army of the Potomac through his careful shepherding of young officers of his own military and social persuasions through the process of nomination to and confirmation of the grade of brigadier general of U.S. Volunteers. These were men that believed in a professional, European-style army, were socially and politically conservative, and for the most part had not been senior officers in the pre-war Army (and therefore had not been hand-picked already by Winfield Scott).

Among the division commanders, the senior leadership of McClellan's new army after his own staff, five of the 11 commanders named by November 9 could safely be called McClellan's men: William Franklin, Fitz John Porter, Charles P. Stone, Don Carlos Buell, and "Baldy" Smith. Only Irvin McDowell was truly Scott's man, though Sam Heintzelman was also from the Old Army leadership promoted by Scott. Nathaniel Banks, Louis Blenker, George McCall, and Joe Hooker were the President's political picks.

Among the 32 brigades commanded by those generals collectively, 15 were led by men who can safely be called McClellanites, with a few more sympathizers additionally. Strategically, McClellan tended to group the brigades of his people together under a divisional commanders that were also his people. McClellan's appears to have already been thinking of divisions as "trustworthy" and "suspected", a separation that would grow in his mind until it became a major problem in the spring.

Much is made about the impact of political generals on the Army of the Potomac, but that may be a function of how many McClellanites served in the army that were around to complain about them for years after the war. Of the three subsequent commanders of the army, two would be fully disciples of McClellan and two would also be ousted by coups engineered by senior leadership cabals consisting of McClellan disciples. Long after he ceased commanding the army, the men that McClellan had put into command positions by Fall 1861 would direct the course of battles and campaigns.

Hooker On The Lower Potomac

Wherein you realize you've been duped again by "hooker" in the post title

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It's been a busy weekend for your blogger, so a post light on effort in the meantime while he puts off a longer post on the latest Beauregard-Davis bru-ha-ha. It's the October 31 report by Joe Hooker that is interesting for two reasons. First, Hooker describes his success at setting up a temporary battery with Parrott guns commanded by Lt. Colonel George W. Getty. The guns are much too small to be an effective battery to control the Potomac, but as you will read, Hooker still had fun with them. Second, it provides a sense of the attentiveness Hooker always paid to care for the men in camp. Unlike many generals of his day, Hooker had very modern scruples about things like cleanliness and nutrition, and units he lead always had better health than their fellow units. Additionally, the mistakes about rations is part of a larger scandal that would come to a head in January.

In the Southern camp, acting Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin spent October 31 meddling in the affairs of Joe Johnston's army again. This time, it was a communication directly to Maj. General Earl Van Dorn, who Johnston believed commanded a division in Maj. General G.W. Smith's Second Corps, and who Benjamin believed commanded the First Division in Johnston's corps-less army. Van Dorn was an old Mississippi friend of Jefferson Davis, who the provisional President had asked to train the Confederate cavalry, and subsequently promised could command all the cavalry in Johnston's army as well as infantry. Johnston didn't like the idea based on two principles: 1) that the cavalry was dispersed for scouting duty and therefore a major general would effectively command no more than a brigade of infantry and, 2) that Jeff Davis should keep his nose out of Johnston's army.

And there's one other major thing that happened on October 31, but you're going to have to wait until tomorrow so I can do that one justice.

The Key to Decipher History

Wherein he blogs about that thing that didn't happen

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Just a short post today on the nature of writing history. McClellan spent October 27 reviewing troops from the division of Fitz John Porter at Fort Corcoran [Rosslyn]. Joe Hooker was leading his division down to Budd's Ferry, opposite Evansport [Quantico], to monitor the Confederates and see if action could be taken to shut down their battery there. Charles P. Stone was trying to get his division put back together after Ball's Bluff. And Winfield Scott was darkly waiting for the President's order into retirement, having heard the results of the previous week's cabinet meeting.

But in the Southern army headquarters at Centreville, the concern was entirely focused on areas outside the theater. First, the army's commander, General Joseph E. Johnston, was doing his best to ignore an order he had received on October 23 from Richmond assigning one of the new major generals he and his fellow general, G.T. Beauregard, had fought to obtain. Maj. General Thomas Jackson, called "Stonewall" because of his actions at Manassas, was supposed to command a division in Johnston's Second Corps. But the Confederate War Department had decided instead to send him to organize the defenses of the Shenandoah Valley in a new subordinate command to Johnston's, the District of the Valley.

Theoretically, Johnston agreed with the creation of a command specifically focused on delivering the Valley, the breadbasket of Virginia. He didn't know it, but Winfield Scott had created a semi-analogous Northern command, the District of Harper's Ferry and the Cumberland, which was to protect the critical railroad infrastructure that Confederates from the Valley could easily spill into and disrupt, cutting the capital from Ohio Its commander, Frederick Lander, had been wounded the day following Ball's Bluff and was in Washington recuperating before heading to his new command. On October 27, men from his department under Brig. General Benjamin Kelley (a former B&O executive and a key player in McClellan's early war western Virginia successes) took aggressive action and captured the mountain city of Romney, underscoring the need for a Confederate commander.

Johnston just didn't want to lose Jackson, who, along with J.E.B. Stuart, he had been working with since April and come to rely heavily on. The trick was dragging his feet enough that the War Department would ask him to name a different commander to the critical post. Richmond, for its part, was too occupied with a different threat altogether to bother Johnston about sending Jackson (or the daily lecture about reorganizing the army to brigading state regiments together). "Sir," acting Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin wrote Johnston, "We have received from several quarters information that the enemy intend a movement in force up the Rappahannock and that he has about 25,000 men in the fleet now concentrated at Fort Monroe for that purpose."

Benjamin continued (with a typically peculiar and prickly addendum):

This may be a feint or the information although coming from friends may have been allowed to leak out with the view of deceiving us, yet it is of sufficient importance to be sent to you. I send a private note to Colonel [Thomas] Jordan the adjutant of General Beauregard by special messenger. The note incloses [sic] a communication in cipher sent to the President from some unknown quarter and the President has an impression that Colonel Jordan has a key which will decipher it. If so, the contents will no doubt be communicated to you by General Beauregard, if of any importance. We have so many apparently reliable yet contradictory statements about the destination of this great expedition that we are much at a loss to prepare defense against it.

History recognizes the expedition as the Port Royal Expedition and so usually leaves out the consternation it caused Joe Johnston when he thought his flank was about to be turned, and instead focuses on the planning, lead-up to, execution, and aftermath of the event as if it was one coherent whole. Union Brig. General Thomas W. Sherman and Commodore Samuel F. DuPont (of the Circle fame) were using Hampton Roads as a rendezvous for two separate forces before heading off to South Carolina together. But for those living it, the arc of the story would only be clear much later, and not fully until after the war. At the time it was a confusing event that led Benjamin to federalize the Virginia militia and accelerate the deployment of troops from as far as Georgia to Virginia, in order to protect Johnston's flank, as well ask ask Johnston to be prepared to shift large numbers of his men around.

On the next day, Benjamin wrote to Johnston, saying, "Just heard from Norfolk that the enemy's great fleet is going to sea, thus indicating that the threat of attack on the Rappahannock was intended to deceive us." Even then, though, for the people living the event, where was the flotilla headed to? Thomas Jordan wrote back to Jefferson Davis directly, coolly ignoring the question about the cipher key and instead confidently let him know that his informants in Washington City indicated the attack was to be on Cape Fear, North Carolina. He was wrong, but that wouldn't be clear for another week, until the expedition appeared at Port Royal. Cape Fear wouldn't be attacked until 1864.

But while the non-story of a Union flank attack via the Rappahannock is ignored by historians short on time and space, the subject Benjamin turned his mind to next shows up in almost every account, because the story it begins goes somewhere stunning:

With the Manifest Aid of the God of Battles

The aftermath of Ball's Bluff for the Southern army

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On the evening of October 22, Colonel Thomas Jordan received a message from Colonel Thomas Rhett. As the adjutants of Generals G.T. Beauregard and Joe Johnston, respectively, the two were in charge of transmitting all orders and communications from headquarters to headquarters. Rhett was sending General Orders No. 47 for promulgation to all units in the army, to congratulate Colonel Nathan "Shanks" Evans on his victory at Ball's Bluff. It is an order typical of Johnston, orderly, straightforward, and gracious. "The skill and courage with which this victory has been achieved entitles Colonel Evans and the Seventh Brigade of the First Corps to the thanks of the Army."

But Jordan didn't send the order to the brigades on October 22, instead he held it over for a day, so that Beauregard could add his own, typically Beauregard, order to accompany it:

At 10:00 am on October 23, the Northern prisoners of war arrived in Manassas Junction for movement to Richmond. Depending on the account, there were between 500 and 600 men that had surrendered at the battle, among them Colonel William Lee of the 20th Massachusetts (a distant relative of Robert E.). Evans had sent the captives to Leesburg the day after the battle, locking the enlisted prisoners in the yard of the courthouse [the present building only dates to 1894, but is on the same site as the Civil War-era yard]. As was the custom, the officers were offered parole, wherein they would be able to move about freely without guard.

The Campaign Continues

Wherein the fighting of Fall 1861 continues, over policies and tents

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As the sun rose higher in the sky on October 13, George McCall's Pennsylvania Reserves waited for a Confederate attack that wasn't coming. Other than driving in of the pickets on the evening of October 12, there was no hostile activities by the Southerners. In all likelihood some Confederate cavalry had been ordered to ride up to the picket line around the newly created camps to get an idea of the new position. The pickets had followed their orders and retreated back to tell their commanders the Confederates were testing their lines and commanders itchy for a fight had seen the signs they wanted to see.

One of these commanders had been the commander of the Army of the Potomac, George B. McClellan. By the time of his daily letter on October 13 to his wife (who had just given birth), he was back at his headquarters at the Wilkes House on 19th and Pennsylvania, NW, after having spent the night in anticipation with the division of "Baldy" Smith in Lewinsville, nearby the Reserves. McClellan was on to other things already. He wrote Mary Ellen:

I am firmly determined to force the issue with Genl Scott--a very few days will determine whether his policy or mine is to prevail--he is for inaction and the defensive, he endeavors to cripple me in every way--yet I see that the newspapers begin to accuse me of want of energy. He has even complained to the War Dept of my making the advance of the last few days [of McCall and Smith's divisions]. Hereafter the truth will be shown & he will be displayed in his true light.

But while McClellan was off to other battles, the Pennsylvania Reserves and Smith's Division had to keep waiting for theirs, as the sun continued to creep across the sky.

On the Eve of Battle

Wherein George Meade prepares himself and his family for a Confederate attack

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October 12, 1861 was a fairly quiet day in the Confederate Army of the Potomac. The promotions to major general had come in for James Longstreet and T.J. Jackson (who was being called "Stonewall" in the popular press after the story about his defense of Henry Hill had spread over the summer), who were assigned to G.T. Beauregard's First Corps and G.W. Smith's Second Corps, respectively. It would be a few more days before they were given multiple brigades to make up their divisions. At least in Longstreet's case, it would only be two brigades, preserving hope that the plan of creating multiple divisions under major generals might continue despite provisional President Jefferson Davis' recent attempts to kill it once and for all (Jackson's subordinates are not recorded in the Official Records, if they were even made).

But in the Union Army of the Potomac, things were aflutter. "I am at this moment looking after the enemy," its commander, Maj. General George B. McClellan wrote to his wife, Mary Ellen. He splurged to send the message by telegram, because that morning he had received a telegram from her announcing she had given birth to the couples fifth (and, as it turned out, final) child, Mary. "I thank God you are safe," McClellan had told her, before his words about seeing to an enemy attack. Despite being sure he would be "in the saddle all day" he encouraged her to telegraph him throughout the day with updates of her status.

McClellan had been at the camp of Fitz John Porter, in what is now Rosslyn, when he received word that the enemy was advancing on the divisions of Brig. Generals W.F. "Baldy" Smith at Lewinsville, Virginia and George McCall at Langley, Virginia. General Joe Johnston, as we have seen, had no intention of an offensive operation, but since Manassas he and his subordinates had actively deceived McClellan about their true intentions. Beauregard especially enjoyed dabbling in these schemes and had a willing partner in his signals and ordnance chief Porter Alexander. In an undated plot implied by Beauregard's biographer to be in August and by Alexander to be in the early fall (perhaps after the Evansport battery opened) the two took advantage of new technology Alexander had wheedled out of Richmond to unhinge the whole Union command structure. As Alexander recalled:

I had my signal stations scattered about on the high places, & of course under orders to report promptly all unusual occurrences. One night, I remember, about bedtime receiving a report that one or two or possibly more rockets had been seen over the Federal lines. I took the report to Gen. Beauregard & he asked me if I had rockets. I said yes, every station was provided, on which he told me to have every station send up one & during the night to have one or two more demonstrations of them. It took very few minutes to send the orders everywhere, & we soon had rockets apparently answering each other for a long distance right & left, & couriers were sent to shoot others, later, at other points. The next papers from the North brought the story above referred to It was said McClellan complained to Lincoln that only he and Gen. Scott knew of his plans, & yet they were allowed to become known to some one who must have betrayed us.

Speaking Freely

What Davis told G.W. Smith behind Johnston's back

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It was no secret that by October 10 the relationship between provisional President Jefferson Davis and acting Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin on the one hand, and Generals Joseph E. Johnston and G.T. Beauregard on the other. For months since the battle at Manassas, various combinations of the leadership in Richmond and the leadership of the marquee army in Northern Virginia had traded increasingly aggressive letters and telegrams. Davis had even come north to consult in person at Fairfax Court-House, but rather than easing the tension it made it worse.

On October 6, Maj. General Gustavus W. Smith, assigned by Johnston to command the unauthorized "Second Corps" of the Army of the Potomac, wrote to Jefferson Davis. The letter is recorded as "not found" in the official records, but its contents can be inferred from Davis' October 10 reply. Also not recorded, is whether or not Smith was prompted to send his letter by Johnston and Beauregard. He certainly had been at the Fairfax Court-House meeting, and, based on his own memorandum written up months later, suggests his sympathies lay with the generals. Whether the letter was a stab at diplomacy (either on Johnston's part or on Smith's own initiative) or not, Davis saw it as any modern politician would: an opportunity to pass on a leaked message to Johnston and Beauregard.

Davis wrote back October 10, starting off easy. Smith had evidently suggested that a unified command be established for the transportation of goods and personnel by rail. By Davis' reply it looks like he suggested Beauregard for the position, though he almost certainly did not recommend it at the loss of command of the First Corps. But that's how Davis decided to take it: "He could no doubt do more than anyone thought of in that connection; but how can he be spared from his present duty?" No, Davis concluded, the best idea was to maintain the quartermaster system based in Richmond.

After the Stampede

A boring day leading an army

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With history of warfare, it's easy to write about the fighting, the things before the fighting that led to it, and the things after that resulted from it. But real-time life in warfare is full of insignificant events that appear monumental, and significant events that go unnoticed. Both occurred in the first week of October.

"I have not written you since the few lines the day we expected to have a fight," Brig. General George Meade wrote to his wife on October 6 from his new camp in present-day McLean, referring to his last letter dashed off at 3:00 pm on September 30. "The stampede lasted for thirty-six hours." In his characteristic fashion, the mild cynic related to her the rumor going through the Union Army of the Potomac that its commander, Maj. General George McClellan, had planned a trap that would be slammed shut by the Pennsylvania Reserves, the informal name for the division to which Meade's brigade of four regiments belonged. "There is no doubt [the Confederates] were appraised of it, though McClellan asserts he did not tell even the generals who were to share in it till the very moment of action, and he is now convinced it is impossible to do or attempt anything without their knowing it."

At the present all is quiet, the enemy having withdrawn to his old lines at Manassas [Meade was off, they had only retired to Fairfax Court-House]. His threatening Washington was a bravado, hoping to draw McClellan out. Failing in this, he has fallen back, thinking we would rush after him, and thus give them a chance to get us at a disadvantage. They are, as Woodbury said, great on strategy, but I guess they will find after awhile that our movements are not to be governed by theirs, and that McClellan is not going to move until he is ready, and then not in the direction they want him.

Beginning to Move

Four vignettes of the beginning of October

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As the weather changed in October 1861, the stagnation that had characterized summer around the nation's capital began to break up. At the end of September, the Confederates evacuated their advanced position at Munson's and Mason's Hills, and the picket war around Bailey's Crossroads and Falls Church died down. The Confederacy's Army of the Potomac, under General Joseph E. Johnston, was falling back to a stronger defensive position, in light of the conclusion that they would be unable to launch an offensive anytime soon.

For Maj. General George McClellan, commanding the Union's Army of the Potomac, it was a time when command of his army was coming together. For McClellan, though, the passing of the imminent threat of Confederate attack (not that he didn't still believe it might come, he just felt prepared for it) seems to have given him full time to worry about his personal battles. "I am becoming daily more disgusted with this administration," he wrote to Mary Ellen on October 2, "perfectly sick of it."

If I could with honor resign I would quit the whole concern tomorrow; but so long as I can be of any real use to the nation in its trouble I will make the sacrifice. No one seems able to comprehend my real feeling--that I have no ambitious feelings to gratify, & only want to serve my country in its trouble, & when this weary war is over to return to my wife...

Little Difference of Opinion

Wherein the future of the CSA is decided

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Beauregard's Headquarters on Main St and Oak St in Fairfax today (LOC)

On the morning of October 1, provisional President of the Confederate States Jefferson Davis bid farewell to his would-be nation's Army of the Potomac and rode by horse for Manassas Junction, where he would take the train to Richmond. He had spent a grim evening the night before with Generals Joseph E. Johnston and G.T. Beauregard, as well as Maj. General Gustavus W. Smith, concluding that the Confederacy was in serious trouble. Like so many choices made by Davis, Johnston, and Beauregard in the first six months of the war, the results of this conference would have a lasting impact on the rest of the war, the fate of the Confederacy, and the war about the war into the 20th Century.

Five days earlier, Johnston had written the acting Secretary of War, Judah P. Benjamin, requesting a strategic conference about the future of his army. In a missive once again berating the War Department for failing to give him enough troops and supplies he wrote, "I think it important that either his excellency the President of the Confederate States, yourself, or some one representing you, should here upon the ground confer with me in regard to this all-important question."

Important and Exciting Work

Porter Alexander and the phony phony war.

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Ron at All Not So Quiet Along the Potomac has been chronicling Confederate activities and has another great post up about Joe Johnston's correspondence with new Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin on September 26 that is the beginning of the South's evacuation of the advanced line within sight of Washington. Please check it out. I offer the following post as a compliment to the narrative he is building.

Historians tend to refer to August and September 1861 as a "phony war" or a period of quiet, but it was nothing like that for Porter Alexander and the rest of the staff officers who worked ceaselessly to prepare the two armies for their next bloody encounter. When we last saw the major, he was touring the carnage of the Manassas battlefield. His hastily trained signal corps had played as central a role in winning the battle as Thomas Jackson's stand on Henry Hill, and the head of the Confederate Army of the Potomac, G.T. Beauregard, recognized it.

The day following the battle, Beauregard asked Alexander to become his new chief of ordnance, his own having been placed in charge of a brigade of Georgians (taking the spot that would have gone to the mortally wounded Francis Bartow). A few days later, Beauregard's army was officially merged with Joe Johnston's army, and Johnston asked Alexander to continue on as the chief of ordnance, since his own had been killed on Henry Hill. Alexander eagerly agreed, and was allowed to continue to live and eat at Beauregard's headquarters, which (at least initially) was closer to Washington than Johnston's. He recounted decades later:

My duties as chief of ordnance were to keep the whole army always supplied with arms and ammunition--infantry, artillery, & cavalry. It does not sound like very much to do, but there was an infinity of detail about it & I had to organize a complete system. First I had to issue blanks to every organization in the army for each one to report what arms it had & what it needed. Then I had to organize a store house for general supplies of this kind at the R.R. station & see that each organization of the army also had a train of wagons sufficient to carry a supply for at least one battle. Then I had to have weekly returns to my office from every regiment & battery & wagon train to have my eye, as it were, on the business everywhere & see what changes were taking place & that everything was as it should be.

One Army

Wherein the org chart of the Army of the Potomac (CSA) looks like swiss cheese

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While the Northern armies around Washington were organizing the massive manpower streaming into the capital, the considerably smaller Southern forces were doing the same. But while McClellan had close to a free hand in choosing his subordinates, Generals Joseph E. Johnston and G.T. Beauregard were under much closer control. The Confederacy's provisional president, Jefferson Davis who liked to be heavily involved in the decisions of generals in the field.

In what would become a bad habit, Davis had sacked his Secretary of War in mid-September and installed the divisive Judah P. Benjamin as acting secretary. Born British, Benjamin was now on his third country, and a close confidant of Davis. But Benjamin was not tactful, and with the bad feelings already brewing between the two generals in Fairfax Court-House and Richmond, he was not the right man to bring the Confederacy's war leadership back together.